by John Irving
“DOONG SA— DON’T BE AFRAID,” he told them, and they stopped crying. The girl orphans had gathered in the doorway.
Major Rawls removed his necktie and tried to apply a tourniquet—just above the elbow of one of Owen’s arms. I removed Owen’s tie and tried to apply a tourniquet—in the same fashion—to his other arm. Both of Owen Meany’s arms were missing—they were severed just below his elbows, perhaps three quarters of the way up his forearms; but he’d not begun to bleed too badly, not yet. A doctor told me later that—in the first moments—the arteries in his arms would have gone into spasm; he was bleeding, but not as much as you might expect from such a violent amputation. The tissue that hung from the stumps of his arms was as filmy and delicate as gossamer—as fine and intricate as old lace. Nowhere else was he injured.
Then his arms began to bleed more; the tighter Major Rawls and I applied our tourniquets, the more Owen bled.
“Go get someone,” the major told one of the nuns.
“NOW I KNOW WHY YOU HAD TO BE HERE,” Owen said to me. “DO YOU SEE WHY?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“REMEMBER ALL OUR PRACTICING?” he asked me.
“I remember,” I said.
Owen tried to raise his hands; he tried to reach out to me with his arms—I think he wanted to touch me. That was when he realized that his arms were gone. He didn’t seem surprised by the discovery.
“REMEMBER WATAHANTOWET?” he asked me.
“I remember,” I said.
Then he smiled at the “penguin” who was trying to make him comfortable in her lap; her wimple was covered with his blood, and she had wrapped as much of her habit around him as she could manage—because he was shivering.
“‘… WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE,’” Owen said to her. The nun nodded in agreement; she made the sign of the cross over him.
Then Owen smiled at Major Rawls. “PLEASE SEE TO IT THAT I GET SOME KIND OF MEDAL FOR THIS,” he asked the major, who bowed his head—and cranked his tourniquet tighter.
There was only the briefest moment, when Owen looked stricken—something deeper and darker than pain crossed over his face, and he said to the nun who held him: “I’M AWFULLY COLD, SISTER—CAN’T YOU DO SOMETHING?” Then whatever had troubled him passed over him completely, and he smiled again—he looked at us all with his old, infuriating smile.
Then he looked only at me. “YOU’RE GETTING SMALLER, BUT I CAN STILL SEE YOU!” said Owen Meany.
Then he left us; he was gone. I could tell by his almost cheerful expression that he was at least as high as the palm trees.
Major Rawls saw to it that Owen Meany got a medal. I was asked to make an eyewitness report, but Major Rawls was instrumental in pushing the proper paperwork through the military chain of command. Owen Meany was awarded the so-called Soldier’s Medal: “For heroism that involves the voluntary risk of life under conditions other than those of conflict with an opposing armed force.” According to Major Rawls, the Soldier’s Medal rates above the Bronze Star but below the Legion of Merit. Naturally, it didn’t matter very much to me—exactly where the medal was rated—but I think Rawls was right in assuming that the medal mattered to Owen Meany.
Major Rawls did not attend Owen’s funeral. When I spoke on the telephone with him, Rawls was apologetic about not making the trip to New Hampshire; but I assured him that I completely understood his feelings. Major Rawls had seen his share of flag-draped caskets; he had seen his share of heroes, too. Major Rawls never knew everything that Owen had known; the major knew only that Owen had been a hero—he didn’t know that Owen Meany had been a miracle, too.
There’s a prayer I say most often for Owen. It’s one of the little prayers he said for my mother, the night Hester and I found him in the cemetery—where he’d brought the flashlight, because he knew how my mother had hated the darkness.
“‘INTO PARADISE MAY THE ANGELS LEAD YOU,’” he’d said over my mother’s grave; and so I say that one for him—I know it was one of his favorites.
I am always saying prayers for Owen Meany.
And I often try to imagine how I might have answered Mary Beth Baird, when she spoke to me—at Owen’s burial. If I could have spoken, if I hadn’t lost my voice—what would I have said to her, how could I have answered her? Poor Mary Beth Baird! I left her standing in the cemetery without an answer.
“Do you remember how we used to lift him up?” she’d asked me. “He was so easy to lift up!” Mary Beth Baird had said to me. “He was so light—he weighed nothing at all! How could he have been so light?” the former Virgin Mother had asked me.
I could have told her that it was only our illusion that Owen Meany weighed “nothing at all.” We were only children—we are only children—I could have told her. What did we ever know about Owen? What did we truly know? We had the impression that everything was a game—we thought we made everything up as we went along. When we were children, we had the impression that almost everything was just for fun—no harm intended, no damage done.
When we held Owen Meany above our heads, when we passed him back and forth—so effortlessly—we believed that Owen weighed nothing at all. We did not realize that there were forces beyond our play. Now I know they were the forces that contributed to our illusion of Owen’s weightlessness; they were the forces we didn’t have the faith to feel, they were the forces we failed to believe in—and they were also lifting up Owen Meany, taking him out of our hands.
O God—please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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The author acknowledges his debt to Charles H. Bell’s History of the Town of Exeter, New Hampshire (Boston: J. E. Farwell & Co., 1888), and to Mr. Bell’s Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire: A Historical Sketch (Exeter, N.H.: William B. Morrill, News-Letter Press, 1883); all references in my novel to “Wall’s History of Gravesend, N.H.” are from these sources. Another valuable sourcebook for me was Vietnam War Almanac (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1985) by Harry G. Summers, Jr.; I am grateful to Colonel Summers, too, for his helpful correspondence. The Rev. Ann E. Tottenham, headmistress of The Bishop Strachan School, was a special source of help to me; her careful reading of the manuscript is much appreciated. I am indebted, too, to the students and faculty of Bishop Strachan; on numerous occasions, they were patient with me and generous with their time. I am a grateful reader of Your Voice by Robert Lawrence Weer (New York: Keith Davis, 1977), revised and edited by Keith Davis; a justly respected voice and singing teacher, Mr. Davis suffered my amateur attempts at “breathing for singers” most graciously. The advice offered by the fictional character of “Graham McSwiney” is verbatim et literatim to the teaching of Mr. Weer; my thanks to Mr. Davis for introducing me to the subject. I acknowledge, most of all, how much I owe to the writing of my former teacher Frederick Buechner; especially The Magnificent Defeat (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), The Hungering Dark (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), and The Alphabet of Grace (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). The Rev. Mr. Buechner’s correspondence, his criticism of the manuscript, and the constancy of his encouragement have meant a great deal to me: thank you, Fred. And to three old friends—close readers with special knowledge—I am indebted: to Dr. Chas E. (“Skipper”) Bickel, the granite master; to Brig. Gen. Charles C. (“Brute”) Krulak, my hero; and to Ron Hansen, the body escort. To my first cousins in “the north country,” Bayard and Curt: thank you, too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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JOHN IRVING has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. In 1992, Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Irving’s most recent novel is In One Person (2012).
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OTHER WORKS
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Also by John Irving
FICTION
In One Person
Last Night in Twisted River
Until I Find You
The Fourth Hand
A Widow for One Year
A Son of the Circus
Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
The Cider House Rules
The Hotel New Hampshire
The World According to Garp
The 158-Pound Marriage
The Water-Method Man
Setting Free the Bears
NONFICTION
My Movie Business
The Imaginary Girlfriend
SCREENPLAYS
The Cider House Rules
CREDITS
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Cover design by James Iacobelli
Cover photograph © by Judy Kennamer/Arcangel Images
COPYRIGHT
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A Prayer for Owen Meany is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The first chapter of this work appeared in The New Yorker in slightly different form.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Alfred Publishing Co. Inc.: Three lines from “Four Strong Winds” by Ian Tyson, copyright © 1963 (renewed) by Warner Bros. Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Alfred Publishing Co. Inc.
Henry Holt and Company, LLC: Excerpt from “The Gift Outright” from The Poetry of Robert Frost edited by Edward Connery Lathem, copyright © 1942 by Robert Frost and copyright renewed 1970 by Lesley Frost Ballantine, copyright © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Excerpt from In One Person copyright © 2012 by Garp Enterprises, Ltd.
Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY. Copyright © 1989 by Garp Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST WILLIAM MORROW PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2012.
ISBN 978-0-06-220409-7
EPub Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN 9780062204103
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P.S.
Insights, Interviews & More …
About the author
Meet John Irving
About the book
My Favorite First Sentence
Read on
More from John Irving
About the Author
* * *
Meet John Irving
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving’s fourth novel and his first international bestseller; it also became a George Roy Hill film. Tony Richardson wrote and directed the adaptation for the screen of The Hotel New Hampshire (1984). Irving’s novels are now translated into thirty-five languages, and he has had nine international bestsellers. Worldwide, the Irving novel most often called “an American classic” is A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), the portrayal of an enduring friendship at that time when the Vietnam War had its most divisive effect on the United States.
In 1992, John Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. (He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, until he was thirty-four, and coached the sport until he was forty-seven.) In 2000, Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules—a Lasse Hallström film that earned seven Academy Award nominations. Tod Williams wrote and directed The Door in the Floor—the 2004 film adapted from Mr. Irving’s ninth novel, A Widow for One Year.
In One Person (2012) is John Irving’s thirteenth novel.
About the Book
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My Favorite First Sentence
I MAY ONE DAY write a better first sentence to a novel than that of A Prayer for Owen Meany, but I doubt it. I have a feeling for first sentences, and I’ve written some pretty good ones. As is my habit, however, I wrote the last sentence of The World According to Garp before I wrote the first one. “But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.” The actual first sentence isn’t bad. “Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.” It works. After all, the primary function of a first sentence is to make you keep reading.
The first sentence of The Cider House Rules also has some staying power. “In the hospital of the orphanage—the boys’ division at St. Cloud’s, Maine—two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from the obligatory circumcision.” The juxtaposition of naming baby boys and examining their penises has a certain charm, and many readers will wonder (rightly) why the circumcision is “obligatory.”
The first sentence of A Son of the Circus is enhanced by the subtitle to the first chapter, which is tempting all by itself—Blood from Dwarfs. The first sentence merely serves to deepen the mystery. “Usually, the dwarfs kept bringing him back—back to the circus and back to India.”
And my 2001 novel, The Fourth Hand, offers a traditional first sentence of the keep-reading kind. “Imagine a young man on his way to a less-than-thirty-second event—the loss of his left hand, long before he reached middle age.” The reader is forewarned that a grisly accident is about to happen; few readers will look away from grisly accidents.
The greatest of all accidents, of course, is an accidental death, which brings me back to the first sentence of A Prayer for Owen Meany. “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”
The semicolon helps, but the clause that follows it was a risk; doubtless there were some readers who’d had it up to here with Christians and stopped right there. I don’t blame them. In the United States today, there is an excess of Christian bragging—too many holier-than-thou zealots in politics, too much righteous indignation in God’s name—but that’s another story. What makes the first sentence of A Prayer for Owen Meany such a good one is that the whole novel is contained in it.
I never write the first sentence until I know all the important things that happen in the story, especially—and I mean exactly—what happens at the end of the novel. If I haven’t already written the ending—and I mean more than a rough draft—I can’t write the first sentence.
For example, the idea that Owen Meany is God’s instrument, or that he believes he is—and so does the narrator—is specifically connected not only to Owen’s diminutive size but to the illusion of his weightlessness. That image of how the children can lift Owen over their heads in Sunday school—how he is light enough so they can easily pass him back and forth when the teacher is out of the room—is not only as near to the beginning of the novel as I could find a place for it; that image is echoed at the end of the novel, where Owen’s seeming weightlessness is interpreted to mean that he was always in God’s hands.
But the penultimate paragraph of the novel is naturally the passage I wrote first. “When we held Owen Meany above our heads, when we passed him back and forth—so effortlessly—we believed that Owen weighed nothing at all. We did n
ot realize that there were forces beyond our play. Now I know they were the forces that contributed to our illusion of Owen’s weightlessness; they were the forces we didn’t have the faith to feel, they were the forces we failed to believe in—and they were also lifting up Owen Meany, taking him out of our hands.”
I added the last paragraph, only two sentences long, a day later. “O God—please give him back! I shall keep asking You.”
I didn’t arrive at the first sentence (“I am doomed to remember . . .”) until a year or eighteen months after that.
The origin of that Sunday school image is autobiographical, in part. I was home for Christmas one year—home being Exeter, New Hampshire, the year being 1983 or ’84. I spent the better part of one night with some childhood friends. I hadn’t seen them in years. Morosely, we were remembering our friends who had been killed in Vietnam, or who had returned from the war so badly damaged that they would never recover from it. In addition to these casualties, we included those friends whose lives had been forever changed—in some cases, ruined—because of what extreme measures they took not to go to Vietnam.
The list was depressing; it being Christmas was strangely interwoven with the sadness. Suddenly one of my friends mentioned a name that drew a blank with me—a Russell somebody. Either I never knew him or I didn’t remember him.
Then another of my friends reminded me that, in Sunday school, we used to lift up this little boy; he was our age, about eight or nine, but he was so tiny that we could pass him back and forth over our heads. It enraged him, which was why we did it. It might even have been my idea. At least it was the opinion of my friends that I was the first one to have picked up Russell whatever-his-name-was.